PLANTS ALIVE
ARCHIVAL CINEMA
This film was made in response to a brief set by my university to use only archival footage to construct a narrative. This project deepened my knowledge and understanding of working with archival material and research techniques.
I came to the concept for this film listening to a podcast about Cleve Backster, a CIA employee who played a key role in the early development of polygraph machine. Among other things, Backster is famous for a series experiments he conducted in the 1960s. In these experiments he connected plants up to a lie detector machine in order to test their stress responses. Backster's results showed that whenever he thought about burning the plant connected to the machine, the plant would initiate a stress response, suggesting the presence of a deeper conscious awareness. The experiment captured my imagination, and as I researched further, a whole world of audio-visual content unfolded to me surrounding the topic of plant consciousness.
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I wanted the film to be a playful exploration; connecting scientific perspectives with a more spiritual view of the subject matter. My hope with the film was to highlight that scientific evidence does exist that supports a more animist view of the natural world. Such viewpoints which are often dismissed from public discourse. To make this film I took content from Youtube, Vimeo, Archive.org, The BFI archive and the British Pathe Archive.